This is How I Will Lose My Fans

Brace yourselves people. I am about to do something quite wankerish and absurd. Perhaps you will find a enough parody and self-loathing in this to find it acceptable; perhaps you will delete me from your favourites list and stop recommending me to your friends. But blow the costs. Today I review...my own blog.

Mr. B is the creative mind behind the Infinite Possiblogities page on Blogspot. Posts on Infinite Possiblogities consist largely of observations and pseudo-reviews written in an informal, manner and are often highly critical. Posts often feature questionable language and grammer that may prove too abraisive and amature for a wide demographic. These posts are often laced with humour although one might argue that the jokes are often few and far between; leaving mostly clumsy and often flimsy remarks that often read like sidenotes of a larger review that is absent altogether. Some posts, particularly possitive ones, are far too lengthy and come across as over indulgent (reviewing things that are only of interest to him). It is hard to imagine who the intended audience actually is. Reviews are often written retrospectively and would therefore have minimal impact and provide little incentive for an occassional reader to read his posts on a daily basis (which is the frequency at which he posts). Mr.b often jokingly cites close friends and family as readers although it is hard to imagine, say, his own mother reading it. In the end it is hard not to conclude that the intended audience is infact himself.

Whilst perhaps enjoyable as a few minutes of escapism, it is hard to recomment myself to anyone other than my girlfriend, friends and myself.

The Dark Knight

I woke up this morning and boy was I surprised. It seems that someone sent me an email (you know who you are) expressing their dissappointment that I chose to review Sonic Adventure 2 when I said I was going to praise something. I can't believe I'm making that big a splash. Ok so it was someone I actually knew, but I feel it's progress all the same. All I can say in my defence is this. I liked SA2. I felt it deserved more recognition and less criticism. It's my blog and I'll review what I like. That said, I would also like to smother the rumour that ALL I like in life is gaming by telling you what I thought of the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Now I realise that The Dark Knight has been out for a while now and has probably been blogged to death but I have to say that for once the hype is actually well founded. The Dark Knight is awesome and hands down the best movie I've seen in a very long time. Heath Ledger's performance is so superb that I actually forgot about his death. The Joker is an awesome badguy, purely in it for the chaos. The whole film is very thrilling. I'm talking "on the edge" and "auto canibalistic" kind of tension. If you haven't seen it yet stop reading here and GO NOW! This is the kind of film that warrents a cinema viewing. The only problem I have with it is that if they ever make another Batman movie it's probably not going to be able to top The Dark Knight. I could yak all day about how loved it is by me but I fear I may bore you.

Oh and just for the record both Margaret and David gave it 4 Stars...it doesn't get much better than that.

A Look Back on Sonic Adventure 2

After several days of posting spiteful commentaries I have decided do something a little different. Instead of crucifying a soft target I am here to stand in defence of Sonic Adventure 2. But before I suit up and start jumping into bullets I feel a bit of background needs to be explored. Asuming you already all about Sonic the Hedgehog and his populater series of 2D platforming games from the 16 bit era (if you don't know or care about Sonic this may not be the article for you) I'm just going to skip ahead to the very first Sonic Adventure game. Sonic Adventure was the first Sonic game to be released for Sega's ill-fated Dreamcast and promised to be just that; an adventure. As well as fast-paced 3D platforming action the game would feature an open world to explore and a more involved story that would come to life through various voice-acted cutscenes. This was a huge step for Sonic and in the end the game fell a little short of the mark. Whilst recieving fairly positive reviews the game managed to cause many fans to turn away from 3D Sonic games. The open world was largely empty, some character's individual adventures were either too short or poorly designed and the game was prone to some pretty bad glitches. To be honest this wasn't Sonic's worst game; other 3D titles such as Sonic 3D and Sonic the Hedgehog (360 and PS3) have caused many fans to renounce newer Sonic titles altogether. But I'm still a believer; a cautious one, but one all the same. I believe beause I've played Sonic Adventure 2.

The Sonic Team obviously reflected heavily on the successes and failures of the original SA when developing it's sequal. What they created was a well paced, more balanced and more fun Sonic experience. The aweful open world was amputated like a gangrenous limb and this helped the game progress at a much speedier and natural rate. Let's face it, a meandering Sonic game is not a true Sonic game. The different characters also get a more even story length than in its' predesessor. The other characters are also more fun to play than they were previously. It is a common criticism of SA2 that the treasure hunt and platform-shooter levels are alot less fun than the fast, action levels. While it's true to say that the latter is where the game truely shines the other levels I found to be a pleasant bit of variety well mixed into the rest of the game. Sonic is also given alot of new abilities; my favourite being the ability to grind down rails on Sonic's "Soap Shoes." The game is not without its flaws though. The camera in particular can be dodgy at times. But I stand by this game as one of Sonic's best. I still play the Gamecube version and Ihave actually enjoyed getting 100% completion. It's one of a very select few games that have had that kind of replay value for me. Whilst the purests may not appreciate it, I enjoyed it thoroughly and would recommend it to anybody who's interested.

Overall Score - 90/100

I liked it so fuck you!

Victoria Roberts is Shit

I'm going to skip the whole intro thing and just say it. I hate Victoria Roberts comics. Every week in the back page of The Weekend Australian Magazine, there she is. You can always rely on her cartoons being shit, just like you can rely on the changing tide. The thing that pisses me off the most is she gets paid for it. Does she have the fucking cushiest job in the word or what? I mean think about it, she gets a whole fucking week to work on this single frame and it never says anything sensible; and she gets paid. This stings especially hard for an unemployed soul such as me; slaving away on my blog trying to make it in this crazy world. Writing new posts everyday, hoping to hit the big time. I mean just have a look at the example I have provided. What IS it!? It's nothing. I mean some people think blogs are pretentious wank but holy shit, Victoria Roberts takes the cake and eats it too. This isn't even her at her worst. One week it was a picture of a naked woman holding a feather duster and jumping over a pot plant; the caption read "spring cleaning." I'm sorry if my blogs have quickly turned into bitchy rants but I must say that Victoria Roberts really, really, shits me. Tomorrow, just for a change, I promise I'll try and talk about something I actually LIKE.

Entertainment Industry 101

Some extremley wealthy people in the not too distant past came up with a very profitable idea that would be repeated over and over to become a very popular move in the entertainment industry. The idea is as follows: take an already rich and well-known personality and attach their name to anything remotely sellable; wringing all the possible profits out of them good and fast before said personality fucks up and spends the rest of their lives as headline fodder in Who Weekly (eg Paris Hilton). The advantage here is that the person is already famous and so all the promotional foundations have already been made and all that is left to do is to attach all the routine "talents" to the celebrity and watch as they generate money for an entire industry whilst slowly self-destructing. This is how it usually goes:

1. 
   
   Star of their own kids TV show (in which they sing the theme song)


2. 
   
   Merchandise for the TV show is released


3. 
   
   They release an album off the back of the talent they displayed for singing their own theme song


4. 
   
   They star in a movie


5. 
   
   They launch their own clothing lable/makeup lable/perfume lable


6. 
   
   They get photographed being drunk, pregnant, homosexual, bitchy or all of the above


7. 
   
   Their pure image tainted, the celebrity is replaced by a brand new, untainted celebrity


8. 
   
   The cycle repeats

One of the latest pre-teen, career launching TV shows is Zoey 101, starring Jamie Lynn Spears (famous for no other reason than being the younger sister of Britney Spears). Needless to say the show opens with a musical number by the up-and-coming star herself. I watched an episode of Zoey 101 on Rollercoaster the other day and I must say that it is the worst TV show in recent memory. Described generously by Wikipedia as "an American live-action situation comedy" the show follows in the tradition of shows like Lizzie McGuire except that in Zoey 101 everything is painfully worse. It features all the usual suspects; the male best friend with a hidden crush, the female best friend who is just a brunette version of the main character, the nerdy friend who is exploited for her knowledge, the self-obsessed bonehead, the younger brother; the list goes on and on.

Deciding to break no boundries at all, all themes in the show are based loosely around "teenage issues" but also try to maintain the purity of all the characters and actors. As an example of this, in the episode I watched the younger brother became involved with a juvenile delinquent character. To really drive her naughtiness home Zoey says that "she kisses boys on the mouth" and that she "wears too much makeup." Holy Shit! Mouth kissing? What a little slut. Why not also say she can't act and further amp up the hypocracy. The guy friend is also the most pussy whipped guy friend ever. He does ALL the dirty work for Zoey and gets fuck all in return. At one point he resists weakly for a second; Zoey says "pleeeeeaaaaase" and the poor, sexless sap caves like a Beaconsfield mine. The plot is slow moving and laboriously explained at every slight twist. The characters flop back and forth; in and out of fake relationships and in the end nobody ends up with anyone else and the status quo is returned - a clean slate ready for next week. Subtlety and realsim shit themselves and die right at the end when 2 of the characters clothes become invisible by an "anti-skunk-smell" spray. Seriously, this show is aweful and virtually unwatchable. Oh and incase you weren't aware, Jamie Lynn Spears got pregnant shortly before the show ended; thus tainting her pure image a little earlier than usual and making way for the next "American live-action situation comedy" to shamelessly cash in on.

Please Excuse the Odd Gaps

If I am yet lucky enough to have regular readers then they (ie. you) might have noticed a distinct lack of posts over the weekend. Reason; I had a very busy and exciting weekend. The REAL reason; brothers weren't at school and so I didn't have access to a PC. I have therefore decided to post some vague guidelines explaining how I plan to run this blog in the future (until I die of a drug overdose or fizzle out).

I will do my best to update this blog with fresh and exciting new posts every weekday. On weekends I will post when possible but I can't make any promises. I will however do my best to make up for the lack of weekend posts on Monday; when I come back to the blog refreshed and full of shiny new ideas (or a fuckload of old ones that I've polished up to look new).

The Infinite Possiblogities Guide to "Doing a Beardy"

To start things up we're probably going to need to identify what "Doing a Beardy" actually is. In short it is a local colloquialism describing the act of wandering back and forth through the main mall (or CBD) because there's fuck all else to do. Ok, now that we've put our urban dictionaries down it's time to get into it.

First up you should check and make sure you have no other commitments. If you have work or an exam for example, then now is probably not the time to do a Beardy. Another aspect to consider is the time. A prime time to be doing a Beardy is either between 12pm and 1pm or after school. These timeslots are the times when the mall is at it's busiest, thus increasing your chances of (A) Bumping unexpectedly into someone you know; or (B) seeing some humorous or strange human behaviour.

Please note: If you are trying to avoid someone you may want to consider very carefully which time would be best for you to partake in a Beardy.

To enchance your Beardy experience you may want to take some loose change with you. Perhaps consider going down or meeting up with a friend or two. Not only does a companion liven up the experience, but having someone with you makes you look less lonely and desperate and therefore, more approachable. Having a friend whom is more popular and sociable than you also helps.

Now on to locations. The mall has many wonderful and varied places to visit; from cafes to clothing stores. Feel free to do a little window shopping as you meander between shops. Perhaps if you are feeling peckish you may consider buying some food or drink items to help sustain yourself. If you have friends or family members who are working at a nearby store you may want to pop in and see how they're going. If you followed my earlier advice on choosing the right time they may be taking their luchbreak soon; opening up a possible hour or so in which you could "hang" with them.

That's about all there is to it. Remember, the most important thing of all is that you have fun. Well that and distracting youself from the fact that you're unemployed, socially unacceptable and probably a sevre burden to that popular, well-adjusted guy you keep bugging to go downtown with you.